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After a couple of hours of shooting the protests in Jantar Mantar we crossed the city of Delhi to an area called Sarita Vihar where we met with a truly inspiring man named Anshu Gupta. Anshu founded and runs an organization called Goonj whose work is an example of real ingenuity and service. Goonj provides clothes and other basic amenities to millions in the far-flung areas of India by turning one person’s waste into a resource for another. Goonj not only redistributes discarded clothing and other items to people in need around India, but takes what most would consider unusable materials and turns them into children’s notebooks, backpacks, school mats, sanitary napkins, rugs and many other things. Nothing goes to waste; every scrap is reused and made into something that can be of great use to another. Anshu walked us through the entire process, from the sorting and breaking down of cloth to the construction of new materials and final touches like sewing buttons. As he took us from room to room I became more and more moved by the conviction and selflessness the work Ashnu’s organization is doing. The model he developed is beginning to catch on with organizations in places as far away as Poland and Brazil.

These next few days should be quite different from Delhi as we enter the world of Tibetan Buddhism and meet with several Rinpoches and nuns including HH the Karmapa, Ven. Choegyal Rinpoche and Ani Tenzin Palmo.




More soon…

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

Director, Global Oneness Project